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A new Pig in Crestline? Mountain Brook City Council gets a look at plans for new grocery store

New Piggly Wiggly at Mountain Brook City Council.JPG

Architect Jeff Slaton, center, and Robert Jolly, president of Retail Solutions, discuss early plans for a new grocery store location in Crestline Village before the Mountain Brook City Council meeting June 23, 2014, in Mountain Brook, Ala. (Jon Reed/jreed@al.com)
(Picasa)

MOUNTAIN BROOK, Alabama -- A new Piggly Wiggly is nowhere near ready to break ground in Mountain Brook's Crestline Village, but the city council got a glimpse Monday night of what the possible new grocer might look like.

Robert Jolly, with Retail Specialists, and architect Jeff Slaton unveiled preliminary designs for the planned Crestline grocery store before the city council's Monday night meeting. The current plan is for the store to go on Vine Street next to the CVS/Pharmacy.

"We've been working with property owners, it's gone very well," Jolly said. "We feel like we're working in harmony with this community."

The preliminary plans call for a store that's about 20,000 square feet -- slightly larger than the old Piggly Wiggly -- and for the addition of 98 parking spaces. Slaton said they hope to design the building so it fits in with the rest of the neighborhood.

"I'm intentionally trying to keep it looking more residential than retail," he said.

Residents at the meeting expressed some concerns with traffic flow at the new location. Most of the people would likely enter the store from Church Street, but customers and trucks would also likely use Vine Street. Between other retail locations on Vine and traffic from nearby Crestline Elementary School, the street is already often packed with cars.

Jolly said they plan to do a traffic study to see how to make it easier for people to get in and out.

"I can't even begin to talk about how the traffic is going to flow but I can tell you we're going to study it," he said.

Residents also brought up concerns with noise from the loading and unloading of trucks, citing the noise caused by garbage trucks. City Council President Virginia Smith said the city would likely limit the hours the store can load and unload, as they do with other grocery stores.